Sarah Winman Quotes & Sayings

You see, that's who you are, Joe. All these things. That's the person I know, and through him is the way you'll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was there. And that's the thing that hurts so much ...
You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. You were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then. And I could at least look at you and think, at least he knows why I am the way I am. There were reasons. But I can't do that anymore and I feel so lonely. — Sarah Winman

But what are we looking for?"
"You'll know when you find it. — Sarah Winman

I'd been feeling like this for a while, the continual looking back, the stuckness of it all. I blamed it on the coming New Year, only four and a half months away, when the clocks would read zero and we would start again, could start again, but I knew we wouldn't. Nothing would. The world would be the same, just a little bit worse. — Sarah Winman

[My mum] was always like that: grateful for life itself. Her glass was not only half full, it was gold plated with a permanent refill. — Sarah Winman

I was transfixed by the possibility of imagination within this home, no matter how strange it appeared to be. This wasn't the quiet symmetry of my everyday, the rows of terraced houses with their rectangular gardens and the routines as reliable as sturdy hairs. This wasn't the world in which things matched, or even went with. This was a world devoid of harmony. This was a world of drama, where comedy and tragedy fought for space. — Sarah Winman

You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky. — Sarah Winman

Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! I would have been cast out from this life years ago with my tatty history. Do I believe in a mystery; the unexplained phenomenon that is life itself? The greater something that illuminates inconsequence in our lives; that gives us something to strive for as well as the humility to brush ourselves down and start all over again? Then yes, I do. It is the source of art, of beauty, of love, and proffers the ultimate goodness to mankind. That to me is God. That to me is life. That is what I believe in. — Sarah Winman

I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit. — Sarah Winman

Truth, as he always said, was overrated, nobody ever won prizes for telling the truth. — Sarah Winman

Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here. — Sarah Winman

Popularity, my dear, is as overrated as a large member. — Sarah Winman

If we can accept the laws of the universe, the ebb and flow of joy and tragedy, then we have everything we need to embrace our true freedom. — Sarah Winman

Those left behind prayed constantly for peace but prayers came back with Return to Sender stamped all over them. Only the roll call of the dead grew. — Sarah Winman

Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us. — Sarah Winman

Marvellous blossomed, having quite forgotten what an exciting and necessary jolt being needed gave. — Sarah Winman

You have to risk failure to become excellent. — Sarah Winman

Shut up, Arthur,' said my mother, and he zipped his mouth shut like an infuriating child.
Ginger started to laugh. Not at anything in particular, but just because Ginger was stoned. — Sarah Winman

I am here but I am not yours. — Sarah Winman

The choir sang and the old man sang and Drake couldn't sing, and suddenly he began to cry because of the music, because of the sound of the boys' voices, because of what they might turn into. — Sarah Winman

I was used to waiting for her. As a child I'd waited for hel all the time, but it never annoyed me because I didn't have the one thing that unfailingly stole hours from her life. 'Sorry I'm late' she used to say. 'It was my hair again. And she spoke of it as if it was an affliction like asthma or a limp or a problem heart, one that slowed her down — Sarah Winman

I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me. — Sarah Winman

He said it was as if she punctured his skin and entered his veins and swan directly to his heart. — Sarah Winman

Their banter was rich and comfortable, their teasing intimate and profound; their 'I love you' without the use of those startling words. — Sarah Winman

The creek was hers now and yet she felt nothing. It had been the longest walk of her life for no one was at the end waiting for her. She slept through winter. Missed Christmas and awoke to a New Year. She felt so lost. Until the first bluebells and ramsons colored the green-brown floor of her world. — Sarah Winman

You can hold onto anything to make you carry on. — Sarah Winman

I wrote about ... my childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit. — Sarah Winman

Things happen. To everyone. No one escapes. — Sarah Winman

And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak. — Sarah Winman

My father believed it was a cancerous lump, not because my mother was genetically prone to such a thing, but because he was looking out for the saboteur of his wonderful life. — Sarah Winman

His excitement was the taper that ignited our sluggish souls. — Sarah Winman

We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had. — Sarah Winman

And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home. — Sarah Winman

You're a Doer, my love. That's why God made you so big. So you could do everything yourself. Girls like you don't quit til you're dead. That should be a comfort. — Sarah Winman

The first thing we need to find,' said Mr Golan, 'is a reason to live'.
...
'Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not out heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering. — Sarah Winman

I'm going to run away," she said.
"Where to?"
"Atlantis," she said.
"Where's that?"
"No one really knows where it is," she said. "But I'll find it and then I'll go and then they'll worry. — Sarah Winman

You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older', I said.
She smiled and said, 'And you can be. But it's not very easy to become Jewish.'
'I know,' I said forlornly, 'I need a number.'
And she suddenly stopped smiling. — Sarah Winman

It was left to Nancy and me to pick up the pieces that my brother had become; to resurrect his shrunken spirit and pull his pale tear-stained face from beneath his pillow and give sense to a world that had given him none; he loved, yet he wasn't loved back. — Sarah Winman

We were all quiet for so long after, touched by the magnitude of it all. This is what we are connected to. What we are all connected to. When the lights go out, so do we. — Sarah Winman

And they held on tight to that beautiful silent moment before words transported them to the realm of the ordinary, to the realm of the inarticulate and mundane. — Sarah Winman

I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger. — Sarah Winman

I just want my friend back, I have become forgettable — Sarah Winman

We were the centre of that liquid universe, for we were the night sun and we said to ships, do not come too close, we have rocks at our feet. And the crash of waves sent white spray flying, and I am scared and exhilarated and a little bit in love too. — Sarah Winman

Love just enough. What's enough? Enough to hold. When it hurts, you're loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you're in trouble. — Sarah Winman

I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. The sky was dark and vast and empty and not even a plane disturbed that sullen stillness, not even a star. The emptiness above was now mine within. It was a part of me, like a freckle, like a bruise. Like a middle name now one acknowledged. — Sarah Winman

I was never in any danger," she said calmly. "Nothing can ever hurt me. Nothing can take me from me. — Sarah Winman

Love. It's the only thing to have faith in ... Or the moon. Soemthing that turns up every day when you cant. The sun. The moon. Anything. You have to have faith in something. — Sarah Winman

Coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life. — Sarah Winman

It was the final chapter of his breakdown, the moment when his glass drained of everything, and its emptiness awaited only for choices to come. — Sarah Winman

He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all - the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page. — Sarah Winman

Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang. — Sarah Winman

No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find. — Sarah Winman

The principles of catching rumours were, in fact, similar to the principals of catching dreams, but because rumour was weightier, the catcher had to be positioned closer to the ground. Rumour flew low, dreams flew high, and somewhere in between were prayers. — Sarah Winman

Don't worry. It'll all come good in the end. Always does. — Sarah Winman

Do you believe in God, Arthur?" I said, eating the last piece of sponge.
"Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! — Sarah Winman

No atheists at sea, Drake. When the waves are the size of mountains even the godless kneel. — Sarah Winman

I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug. — Sarah Winman

Shunning all offers of help, all offers of the more practical ... This was his task, he said, and it would be carried out alone. Penance, my brother reminded me, was a lonely place to be. — Sarah Winman

Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else's was worse than yours. — Sarah Winman

never stop playing — Sarah Winman

She trekked back across the meadow and down through the trees in possession of the oldest secret known to man. She sat on the mooring stone and surrendered immediately to the down of night. She hadn't slept long before she suddenly jolted awake. Thought she had heard the sweet call of a lark ascending. Unaware that it was actually the sound of her soul awakening. — Sarah Winman

There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall. — Sarah Winman

So, thought Peace, there was a wall around his heart and she wondered whether she should hoist up her skirt and scale that wall, but she knew she didn't have the right shoes on for that sort of climb because hers were too sensible for a man like Drake. — Sarah Winman

And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember. — Sarah Winman